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Help:Introduction
Registration and logging in You can read and edit pages without creating an account or logging in. To create an account (which is free), just click the " " link at the top right corner of any page. Creating an account is the only way to clearly attribute your work. Without a username, edits you make will be attributed to the numerical IP address of your computer instead. Logging in therefore also increases your privacy, because your IP address will be hidden once you are logged in. There are many other benefits, such as user preferences, the ability to move pages, and a watchlist to keep an eye on selected pages. See " " for some more benefits. See . Policies Do not submit copyrighted material without permission. The best content is usually written from either personal knowledge or through the synthesis of research from multiple sources. For a more detailed discussion of copyrights, see Mechapedia:Copyrights. Wikia encourages an atmosphere of friendliness and openness. Members of the community are expected to behave in a generally civil manner. You should always assume good faith on the part of other editors. See Category:Policy for more information. Editing Like all wikis, you can edit any non-protected page. Your changes will be visible immediately. Just click the "edit" link that appears at the top of every page. Explain your edit in the "Summary" box between the edit window and the save and preview buttons. eg: "typo" or "added info on xyz". Use the button to check your edit and get the formatting right before saving. Remember to save your preview before moving on. If you are , you can mark an edit as minor by checking the This is a minor edit box to let people know your edit is not something substantive. To try editing, open a new window and go to the Mechapedia:Sandbox (which is an editing test area), and then click the "edit" link. Add something and click save. Formatting Most text formatting is usually done with wiki markup, so you don't have to learn . Bold and italics Bold and italics are added by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes ('): *''italics'' is rendered as italics. (2 apostrophes on either side) *'bold' is rendered as bold. (3 apostrophes on either side) *''bolded italics'' is rendered as bolded italics. (2 + 3 = 5 apostrophes on either side) Headings and subheadings Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see two or more distinct topics being discussed, you can break up your article by inserting a heading for each section. Headings can be created like this: * Top level heading (2 equals signs) * Subheading (3 equals signs) * Another level down (4 equals signs) * Another level down (5 equals signs) If an article has at least three headings, a table of contents (TOC) will be automatically generated. Try creating some headings in the sandbox and see the effect on the TOC. Indenting To indent text, place a colon (:) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline (pressing Enter or Return) marks the end of the indented paragraph. For example: This is aligned all the way to the left. :This is indented slightly. ::This is indented more. is shown as: This is aligned all the way to the left. :This is indented slightly. ::This is indented more. Bullet points To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (*). Similar to indentation, more asterisks in front of a paragraph means more indentation. A brief example: :*First list item :*Second list item :**Sub-list item under second :*Isn't this fun? Which is shown as: :*First list item :*Second list item :**Sub-list item under second :*Isn't this fun? Numbered lists You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the number sign or hash symbol (#). Using more #s will affect the level of indenting. Example: :#First item :#Second item :##Sub-item under second item :#Third item Shows up as: :#First item :#Second item :##Sub-item under second item :#Third item Table of Contents The Table of Contents can be positioned using the following example: Links Links are important on wikis to help readers navigate your site. Internal links You can extensively cross-reference wiki pages using internal links. You can add links to existing titles, and also to titles you think ought to exist in future. To make a link to another page on the same wiki, just put the title in double square brackets. For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the WMecha page, it would be: :Mecha If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can add an alternative name by adding after the pipe "|" divider (SHIFT + BACKSLASH on English-layout and other keyboards). For example, if you wanted to make a link to Mecha, but wanted it to say "home page" you would write it as such: :View the home page... It would appear as: :View the home page... When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets. For example, you would write: :Add questions to the Mechapedia for quizzes. It would appear as: :Add questions to the Mechapedia for quizzes. Interwiki links To link to another Wikia, you can use its interwiki links, instead of using the full URL. For example, the Gundam wiki home page is at Gundam Wiki:Main Page, which can be typed as :Gundam Wiki:Main Page :rather than as http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page External links If you want to link to a site outside of Wikia, just type the full URL for the page you want to link to. :http://www.google.com/ It is often more useful to make the link display something other than the URL, so use one square bracket at each end, with the alternative title after the address separated by a space (not a pipe). So if you want the link to appear as Google search engine, just type: :Google search engine Redirects To redirect automatically from one page to another, type #REDIRECT and then put in brackets the name of the page to be redirected to. For example, you could redirect from "Mechas" to "Mecha". That way, anyone typing either version in the search box will automatically go to "Mecha". When redirecting to a category, you need to write a colon before the word category. Like this: #REDIRECTCategory:Mechapedia. If you forget the colon, it will appear as a part of that category which is weird. Wiki variables and templates Use to print the site name. For instance, on this site prints out as . That and a few other templates are common to MediaWiki sites. You can create templates. After you create the page Template:XXX, using the command will include that content in your current page. So, if you have something that needs to be included on many other pages, you might want to use a template. Discussion pages Discussion or "talk" pages are for communicating with other Mechapedians. To discuss any page, go to that page and then click the "discussion" tab at the top of the page. Add a new comment at the end, or below the comment you are replying to. Sign your comments by typing ~~~~ to insert your username and a timestamp. Use indenting to format your discussion. Standard practice is to indent your reply one level deeper than the comment you are replying to. Experiment by editing the talk page of the sandbox. User talk pages Everyone has a , on which other people can leave public messages. If someone has left you a message, you will see a note saying "You have new messages", with a link to your user talk page. You can reply on the user talk page of the person you're replying to or on your own talk page beneath the original message. If you reply on their talk page, they will receive notification of it. See also *More Wikia help pages :* :* :* :* *Policies *MediaWiki User's Guide *Wikipedia tutorial *An annotated Wikipedia article Introduction